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Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

By: Raquel Okyay - 2/2/2014
A professor of law and author of Negroes And The Gun told Guns & Patriots his newly released book describes the mostly undocumented historical account of blacks bearing arms.

I grew up in rural West Virginia. Everybody I knew had guns, said Nicholas J. Johnson a professor of law at Fordham University, a Jesuit college located in New York City. In a score of scholarly articles Johnson has been covering the Second Amendment topic for the past 20 years.

The book is an extension of my scholarships, said the Harvard Law School graduate.

Historically blacks were targeted for gun control, he said. It is explicit as early as 1680 in Colonial America.
Similar targeted gun control was implemented in post-Civil War Black Codes, which contributed to the passage of the 14th Amendment, he said.

Much of the conversation surrounding the passage of the 14th Amendment went to the problem of southern state governments who, in an essential act of war, were explicitly attempting to disarm freedmen. A freedman was a former slave who was legally released by emancipation or by owner.

Southern states enacted gun control statutes in the post-Civil War period that were de-facto racially motivated, said Johnson. In the beginning of the 20th century discriminatory provisions were in effect in a variety of places.

The people who fought against discriminatory practices are American heroes, said the writer for The Volokh Conspiracy a division of The Washington Post.

Two U.S. Supreme Court cases that recently affirmed our right to keep and bear arms were led by black plaintiffs: Shelly Parker and Otis McDonald, he said. Lots of people thought Parker and McDonald were dupes or fools. It turns out they were an extension of a long tradition of a sober, mature community having access to firearms.

The book shows that up until the 1970s the image of gun ownership in the black community is more consistent with reality than what is in the popular news today, he said.

During the 1970s there was a new black political group gaining power in the urban context, said Johnson. Lots of black politicians latched-on to the idea of supply side gun control as an answer to the crime and turmoil in environments that were taken over with gun violence; one can understand how they might have embraced those themes.

But the promise that gun bans were the answer did not materialize, he said.

In places such as Washington and Chicago, where groups attempted to control supply, the guns did not disappear as expected, the guns were redistributed, he said. Now the worst people in the community are armed and the best people in the community or not; they are afraid and under siege.

The empirical work shows that communities end-up with an armed micro-culture which is typically a very small number of young men who are terrorizing communities, he said. Part of this suggests that supply controls were an experiment that did not pan-out.

Ultimately we must recognize that supply control measures did not work, said Johnson, who is also co-author of Firearms Law and the Second Amendment, published in 2012. In the U.S.A. today there are about 300 million guns.

After the Heller decision overturned D.C.'s handgun ban a scholarly article suggested that targeted gun control be part of the modern civil rights movement, he said. They were working to create carve-outs under Heller so that at least in certain black communities' gun prohibition could be upheld as an exceptional necessity

Johnson said it is discriminatory that an acknowledged prerogative of citizenship is denied to the black community. The idea that certain communities are just too dangerous and these folks are not prepared for freedom is problematic

In relation to gun homicides, the data is fairly clear that the people who murder are extremely aberrant people, he said.

The stereotype of someone who was otherwise showing no signals of any violent incidences sort-of flying off the handle and becoming a murderer are repeated so often in the media people think it is a common thing, when it is actually an aberrant circumstance.

False stereotypes cause a cultural divide between urban and rural dwellers, said Johnson.

City dwellers have a predisposition against gun rights, while in rural communities their image is much different, he said. It is culturally my experience that there are lots of good, honest, sober, mature gun owners.

In rural America people see guns as tools to be used as a protective measure, whereas in urban areas people are quick to abandon their gun rights and instead at their own risk rely on the state's protection, he said.

The idea that a government actor is going to swoop-in and solve problems is a little more foreign to rural gun owners than in an urban context.

Despite the strong evidence that suggest that armed, adult members of the community have the effect of providing an important disincentive to violent crimes, Blacks are still denied the ability to defend themselves, said Johnson.

How do you tell people who live in a dangerous environment that they have to rely entirely on the state for personal security even though they know as a matter of physics that there is a window in which the state cannot respond?

People can make their own decisions about their personal security, he said. The firearm is an important tool in the process of securing our homes and family.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.